Cosmosis

Heat

(Starspeak)

As funny as it was walking into Fort Knox, there was a lot of engineering that went into it, all designed around the idea that we needed to carry a rather large metal coffin out with us.

Rather inconveniently, the coffin was actually going to be too big to fit through the hatches of the M&M’s submarines, and we couldn’t utilize the cargo loading bay while submerged.

Breaching the exterior of the Diving Bell on the other hand…

They had to have some outside access panels. Even if Adeptry could clean the outside of the windows safely from within, there was at least some maintenance that required outside access. Exterior water intake vents. Sonar transducers. That sort of thing.

What they all had in common was one fundamental weakness to an exterior attack: the water pressure. The few exterior access hatches the Diving Bell had all needed to withstand thousands of P.S.I. from the water, pushing back against the ocean depths at all times.

But since we could clear away the water with Nai and Johnny’s powers…

Without the water pressure to oppose them, the hatches quite literally popped themselves open.

We piled into very cramped quarters of an air lock just barely large enough to hold all of us. On the opposite side of the Diving Bell, I knew Nai and Macoru’s half of the crew were doing the same.

Despite the fact that we were heading into an aerated environment, we kept our face masks on. This was a heist. The plan was to stay under the radar, but in the likelihood everything didn’t go according to plan? No need to make identifying us any easier.

Mavriste said, intentionally including his rak in the transmissions.

I said.

she confirmed.

she reported.

You could practically hear the anticipation in her big inhale.

We waited.

All of us.

This was going to be tricky, and it all came down to Jordan’s ability to guess how quickly she could melt through a solid foot of protective glass meant to withstand an ocean.

<…Five seconds,> she warned.

I ordered.

Itun, obedient dog that he’d been made into, stood back while Vo levered open the airlock’s interior hatch. A hiss helped the motion along as she got it open, air from inside the Casino rushing out to fill our low-pressure crystal access tubes.

It was the first of several moments of truth.

If the facility had a sophisticated system, a depressurization alarm might be set off.

Good money said they did.

But better money said depressurization alarms would track if the pressure loss was sudden or steady. What we’d done would be sudden. A rapid drop in pressure, even a slight one, that then stopped? Just as quickly as it started?

Well the Vorak running this place might be criminal, but they weren’t stupid.

That was a breach of security.

But a sudden pressure drop followed by a steady decline?

That was just a breach in the hull. Extremely disconcerting for any guest, but much more mundane for any on site security. It probably didn’t happen often, or at all. But there would be protocol to follow and all eyes would be on the leaking spot in the hull.

Jordan’s job was creating that breach. While Johnny and Nai erected the tubes allowing us to march inside, Jordan leveraged the fact that she could create material from almost a mile away. She didn’t have the force of emergence to create anything through the water pressure outside. Inside? It was almost ordinary atmosphere.

That would have made a tricky target for her. All the range in the world was only so helpful if you couldn’t aim carefully. But Jordan had a precision about her when she had line of sight, and a psionic targeting laser helped turn an impossible task into a simple time-consuming chemistry problem.

Acrylic, polycarbonate laminate, even transparent aluminum ceramic. Exotic acids were complicated, technical, esoteric Adeptry, but Jordan had learned to corrode them all with the right substance.

It was crucial she not actually melt the material. We didn’t want the place flooding. We just wanted the water pressure to crack one the of the windows enough for water to seep through, spray, and create a very large and distracting panic.

Somewhere far above, a scream went out, as well as a klaxon blared.

Jordan said from back on the sub.

Perfect.

On the far side, Johnny stayed put outside, and Nai took a secondary role behind Macoru.

The two of them were eating up a lot of their mass limits maintaining our seafloor tunnels. But that was what the M&Ms were for…

Muscle and more muscle.

Mavriste led our team’s charge, stomping through cramped maintenance access corridors, almost identical to the soul sucking steel bulkheads of the submarines. This was the riskiest part of our operation, when we were rushing to get in position, trying to keep a low profile.

We’d elected not to use psionic radar, candled or otherwise, because of the risk an enemy might sense it on feedback.

Cascades were on limited use too. Mavriste was heading our charge because of his ability to project his cascade ‘softly’ without tipping off any Adept cascading the same ground. It had he and Macoru giving both teams the opportunity to aggressively advance, being able to tell when an enemy security patrol might be around the corner.

Our route wasn’t direct, but we had blueprints of where the cameras were, and what hallways could be taken to avoid them.

On this, the lowest sublevel, personnel were the most likely encounter to sink us.

Luckily, we seemed clear.

Unluckily?

Well that was just a matter of time with us.

Mavriste called.

We slammed to a halt lined up outside a bulkhead leading out into a wider hallway, one with a simple rug stretching its length and no water proof hatches spaced every twenty meters.

It was a planned halt. Our route was shorter than the one Macoru’s team was forced to take to arrive at a different spot further down the hall.

I put my hand on the wall and pushed my cascade through the steel, up the wall on the other side, trying to locate the camera overlooking the hallway we’d stopped just short of…

Shit.

I warned.

she swore.

The old cameras had been little more than boxes on adjustable arms: static. They always pointed in one direction. Sticking a high-resolution polaroid right in front of it could fool it.

But the camera currently hanging from the ceiling in the hallway was a swivel-mounted spherical eye, high resolution—wait, what?

Itun was standing just a few feet away from me, and if he hadn’t been, my brain might not have gone to the right memories.

Alien computers didn’t measure up to Earth’s in a lot of ways, but two topped the list. Size and memory. In the Green Complex, it’d been an Achilles’ Heel. Their cameras’ footage just couldn’t store that much footage. A couple weeks, tops.

Those models had shot crummy pictures too.

But these cameras were high-res. It would take more memory to store this camera’s feed for review. So either they weren’t storing the footage and were strictly relying on a live pair of eyes watching the feeds…

Or we were dealing with something that had more memory than ordinary alien computers would.

I announced, adding details for Nai,

she asked.

I gave Mavriste a dour glance, and he returned it.

I said.

Everyone rumbled back.

I motioned for Mavriste to check the hall one more time with his cascade, and as soon as he flagged it clear, I strolled out into the hallway, in full view of the camera, everyone else right behind me.

Itun was the one who ended up materializing a small knob of plastic explosive on the side of the camera.

From here on out, stealth was a pretense.

We darted through this camera’s view quickly enough, but sooner or later, someone in the security room was going to be looking at the right monitor at the right time—even with all eyes on the leaking distraction on the casino levels above.

When that happened? We’d blow every camera we could. Add to the chaos.

Mavriste stopped me.

Our team of four were heavy hitters. Even thinking of Itun as ‘little bear’ compared to Vo and Mavriste’s ‘middle’ and ‘big’ bears, he was still a far cry from the Adept I’d fought years ago.

I bit down on my knee-jerk reaction to get irritated at Itun’s talents and focused on the questions that mattered right now.

Was our team strong enough to afford splitting up?

Maybe.

What made me say ‘yes’ was speed. Vo and I would get to the security office faster without the two of them, risking less exposure to cameras.

I nodded, and Mavriste immediately broke off, consulting our psionic floorplan.

At least Cadrune’s information was good there.

Vo followed me as we dove further through the access corridors. Our first obstacle were two security guards that we couldn’t detect without Mavriste’s cascade checking ahead of us.

Without hesitating, I slammed the first one against the steel wall, delivering a psionic onslaught that overwhelmed their firewall in an instant. My Superconnector helping spear critical constructs and yank them out faster than the Vorak could react.

Vo did the same to the second guard, getting an arm around their throat before any weapons could be drawn.

I reached over and obliterated that guard’s psionics too, taking care to preserve and steal their ‘check-in’ comm buttons and authorizing tags. Neither was Adept, so they wouldn’t be able to recreate them, and if security did a comm check, I could use their buttons to signal like nothing was wrong.

Both guards were still in a daze from the first hits when Vo stabbed a tranquilizer into one’s neck, tossing me a vial for my guard.

Tranqed and zip-tied, these guards wouldn’t be raising any alarms any time soon. Vo and I ditched them in the locker room they’d emerged from and continued pressing toward our access point for the security office.

We avoided elevator shafts. They required keycards to operate on the lower levels, and while we could surely steal some, Cadrune’s scouting said that the keycards only triggered a manual authorization request from the security office.

Anyone using an elevator was directly and carefully scrutinized by security.

All the more reason to take control of that office fast.

Vo said. They’d noticed me keeping a slower pace for their sake.

I didn’t argue.

The security office was one floor above us, but it was far away from any stairwell. Our options to breach it weren’t good. The original plan had been to sneak under it, take our time, and seize control of the whole place without anyone being the wiser.

But Vo and I were going to have to make do on our own.

I said.

they said, drawing their beam-emitting stave.

Double checking our floorplan, Vo started cutting into the ceiling, careful not to cut too deep. While they did, I kept my palm pressed against the ceiling directly aside, cascading through to the floor above and make sure that no one inside could find our cutting with their own cascade.

Vo informed me.

I said, hefting the chunk of steel they’d cut overhead.

They nodded, repositioning ten feet further down the hall, turning the intensity on their beam-stave all the way up.

This time, it lanced all the way up through the floor, Vo carving a circular hole in seconds.

Panicked shouts could be heard from the rak overhead, but I was flying into motion too. I made three moves simultaneously. First, I popped a candled radar. Forced to breach the security office alone, the benefits outweighed the risks. Second, I materialized a flashbang roughly four feet off the ground in the room directly above us. Third, I detonated a kinetic bomb right underneath Vo’s first, incomplete set of cuts.

Textbook.

Tracking all enemies on radar, all four rak in the security office noticed Vo’s unsubtle hole carving through their floor. They didn’t have a full second between noticing that, and my flashbang that filled the room.

My kinetic bomb blew apart the floor paneling and carpet still in my way, and I jetted up into the security office behind it.

Three of the rak were sitting at computer stations, clutching their eyes and hunched over. The fourth was Adept, on their feet, and trying to force their eyes open.

Priority target.

I didn’t bother trying to preserve this rak’s psionics. My mind let out a scream of crude, unrefined psionic violence. With no time to prepare for the attack, the Adept’s mind just wasn’t ready to contend with the damage, and every construct in their mind was pulverized to psychic dust.

That alone would have stunned them enough, but I materialized my gun and shot them twice in the belly for good measure. My revolver barked in the enclosed space, and while our earplugs protected us from the worst…

Well, everyone else in the room was already deafened from my flashbang. Gunshots probably wouldn’t do that much more.

The Adept—who I assumed was chief of security—was merely knocked breathless from the bullets. Their armor chest piece did its job, but the wind was still knocked out of them.

Vo asked me, darting up the holes we’d carved.

I said.

they nodded, turning to zip tie the computer techs still clutching their ears.

One look around the room told me everything I needed to know. Sleek computers with customized operating systems ran on every monitor in the room, smooth frame video from no fewer than two-dozen feeds across the Diving Bell.

Among all the monitors though, it was the camera inside the security office that stood out. Tucked away, almost innocuously in the corner adjacent to the main office door.

It was locked on me, following my every move as I checked each machine.

<…Nai, Mav, Mac, heads up,> I warned.

Macoru asked.

Mavriste admitted.

Macoru and I simultaneously asked.

<…I’m alright,> he signaled.

I said, beckoning them over to the wheezing security chief.

Manpower was the first big advantage the M&Ms were lending us. The second was the submarines we’d arrived in—not only for the transportation, but some of the finest cybersecurity offenses on the planet.

They broke into secure transmissions all the time, and they had to stay mobile doing it.

Vo heaved a cylindrical computer module off their back, passing it to me before going to interrogate the chief of security.

Quickly as possible, I ran to the office door and locked it. A minor precaution before beginning to completely tear this place down.

Vo’s computer probe was the size and shape of a hotel buffet coffee thermos, but as bulky and awkward as it was, every port was clearly labelled.

I shoved one of the techs aside, still not recovered from the flashbang, and began wiring the probe into the computer station that looked most important.

I announced.

<…We need one on a station that’s already logged in, preferably with administrative overrides,> the Vorak back on the submarine said.

I asked.

Reminding myself, I glanced at the three computer techs just to make sure they weren’t going to try anything, before marching over to Vo and the security chief currently resisting questioning.

Without warning, I jabbed my glove into their ear searching for an earpiece. Nothing. In either ear. Strange.

The rak tried to bite my hand when I went to check their throat for any kind of mic, but I stunned them with a punch to the nose.

I said.

I looked up at the label on their vest.

‘Chief of Security’ it read.

Mavriste said.

I said.

Nai said.

I said simply.

Nai realized. She’d have steered me in the right direction and arrived only a second later than me.

I directed Vo.

I wrenched one of the techs up from the ground, patting down their pockets.

Vo reported, fishing one out of a zipped pocket in the chief’s vest.

I found an identical hockey puck on the computer tech.

Ooo, bad news for them.

Psionic comms in physical form gave for some interesting new encryption possibilities. I hadn’t even detected any transmissions before now. But even with a firewall built into the comm disk itself, as soon as I touched it?

New transmissions opened up to my mind.

The firewall on the disks was a formality, really. The security was biased for the exterior. It was good at keeping people entirely out, but once you got your hand on the disk, you were inside and could look at any message you wanted.

Double bad news for them?

Their system had a log, and I could tell our flashbang went off before these idiots could send out a call.

Unfortunately, the leak we’d created upstairs had raised the tension perhaps too high. Calls were coming in for the security office, and they weren’t responding.

I told Vo.

they nodded.

Unable to get more than a grunt out of the chief of security, Vo jabbed a tranquilizer into their neck. It wouldn’t knock them totally out. But it didn’t matter if you were conscious if you still couldn’t lift an arm.

Vo started chattering away with the psionic disk, and I switched gears again, refocusing on the computer probe providing a remote connection for the submarines to begin taking control of things we wanted, like, say, the vault doors.

she replied.

I glanced at Vo. Nothing.

I followed.

That made sense. The bots couldn’t use psionics. But surely someone here had to know about the robot guards. They wouldn’t just be operating completely independent of one another.

I whirled to meet Vo’s gaze. We’d been made! They switched gears, no longer trying to deflect attention from the security office, and started throwing misinformation into the ranks. I tossed the computer techs’ disks to them.

More tools to sow chaos with.

Vo suggested.

I grinned, stuffing the tall cylinder underneath the desk. I even stuck it to the underside so nobody would see it unless they stooped over and looked all the way under.

Vo’s next step was to drag the chief in front of the transparent door, the same place where I corralled the recovering computer techs at gunpoint.

We zip-tied the four of them together before affixing a fake bomb to the door, very visible from the outside. Running a very suspicious looking wire from the bomb to the zip-tied rak really sold the illusion, even to the ones who saw us create the fiction.

It would buy us time, at the very least the minutes we needed for the M&Ms’ submarines to steal control of the vault doors.

I was just putting the finishing touch on the contraption—a convincing looking mercury switch that would surely set off the bomb with just a jostle—when a figure flickered into view and shot through the door.

There was just enough time to pretend to press a button ‘arming’ the bomb before I dove out of the way. Vo and I withdrew toward the back of the security office where we’d first breached inside.

I gave the camera one last look before putting a bullet through it and dropping back through the holes carved in the floor.

I said.

All throughout the Diving Bell, booms went off simultaneously wherever we’d encountered security cameras, and I felt Nai’s cascade push underfoot a few seconds later. Just her alone would be able to cover a third of the whole facility’s floor plan.

I asked Mavriste and Macoru.

Mavriste said.

That trouble found us just seconds later. Bots didn’t show up on psionic radar, and Nai’s warning saved me.

She could sense the bots with her cascade and gave me the exact heads up I needed to throw a pane of crystal up to shield us.

Bullets slammed into it, spider-webbing deep cracks. Before the bots could fire a second burst, Vo sprang forward with their beam-stave, extending the plasma and slicing through them like butter.

Nai warned, pointing me to another spot on her cascade.

I said.

Coming back to the large hallway dividing this level in two, there was a new kind of robot standing in the wider corridor.

It wasn’t unfamiliar though. It stood more than seven feet tall, with elegantly contoured eggshell white armor, sporting special weaponry that the rank-and-file bots didn’t. CENSOR’s bleached ivory aesthetic brought to mind chess pieces, and the plain footsoldier bots sure did bring to mind ‘pawns’.

Madeline’s report had described a bot much more like this one. Tall. Imposing. She’d talked about how it could move fast across long distances in bursts. She hadn’t given it any special name, so I decided we’d call it a bishop.

This wasn’t the same type of bot though. Madeline’s scans of the armor and chassis had been in detail. This one wasn’t quite as tall, and the torso looked less armored. But this one’s joints were bulkier too…

The Diving Bell was cramped close quarters, with all sorts of obstructed sight lines. There was a chess piece that excelled in such conditions, able to squeeze through gaps and make oblique threats from a variety of positions.

That made this bot a Knight.

“” I warned Vo. “”